Rackspace Hosting is planning to expand its global cloud network through a program that would have Rackspace build and run interoperable public clouds for service providers around the world, such as telcos.

As the founder of OpenStack, Rackspace says the company is positioned to help speed a partner’s successful entry as a cloud provider in the OpenStack ecosystem with proven Rackspace technology, operations and go to market expertise.

For telcos and other large service providers, Rackspace plans to make available all the components needed to build a successful cloud business, including:

• Cloud technology: Rackspace Cloud hardware and software infrastructure, powered by OpenStack, with continuous automated testing and delivery of updates from Rackspace engineering teams.
• Infrastructure Operations: Patching, tuning and monitoring with carrier-grade SLA’s.
• Go-to-market support: Sales and support training, collateral, and customer references to accelerate the time to market needed for a successful launch.
• Extended reach for users: Cloud users would benefit from the program’s interconnected, individually owned and operated data centers around the world by being able to run their workloads in multiple geographies. Customers of any one program partner in the network would have access to additional resources through the other program partners in the network.
• Increased resource utilization for providers: Rackspace and all other program partners would expand their datacenter reach to include those of the other program partners. This would enable the program partners to increase resource utilization and cloud growth by selling through other providers in the network.

“Rackspace is developing its OpenStack based cloud technology that it uses in its own cloud into a commercially supported, packaged offering,” said Gary Chen, research manager for IDC's Cloud and Virtualization System Software. “Not every provider wants to or should build a cloud from scratch, and Rackspace's experience with cloud computing and this turnkey packaged cloud solution should be of interest to other providers. IDC believes that a global federated service provider cloud network that allows creation of hybrid clouds with resources from multiple public providers could be a compelling solution for customers.”

“We have had interest from service providers on nearly every continent to extend Rackspace’s proven OpenStack powered public cloud solutions and expertise to their customers. It is important to broaden the adoption of open-source technologies through partners around the world,” said Lanham Napier, CEO for Rackspace. “The creation of this network allows for different providers, in different regions, with different service characteristics to link together to better serve the cloud users around the world with a fully interoperable global ‘cloud of clouds’. Rackspace is passionate about leading this charge and helping service providers capitalize on the expanded network to better serve their customers.”